


Ten and Twenty

by ardentintoxication



Series: Hurt/Comfort Bingo [2012] [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Abandonment, Alternate Universe, Community: hc_bingo, Corporal Punishment, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hazing, Hurt/Comfort, Prequel, Remix, Whipping, Whump, mostly hurt almost no comfort, you want the comfort you can read the inspiration fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-15
Updated: 2012-12-15
Packaged: 2017-11-21 05:49:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/594155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ardentintoxication/pseuds/ardentintoxication
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“This isn’t my first rodeo. Or even my tenth, really.”</p><p>For my free square on hc-bingo. I'm filling it with "whipping." Inspired by arsenicarcher's <i>The Goat's Back.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Ten and Twenty

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Goat's Back](https://archiveofourown.org/works/578393) by [arsenicarcher (Arsenic)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arsenic/pseuds/arsenicarcher). 



> It's a good idea to read arsenicarcher's lovely fic first to understand the universe. What you need to know:
> 
> In this universe, Steve is part of a supersoldier program that failed mostly because the test subjects weren't controllable. Those in the program that did not choose to be terminated were assigned to special ops teams. There is a reason that a lot of them did choose to be terminated: it is protocol for the commander of a team to take any punishment for an infraction for the rest of the team, in front of them, corporally. One team member must count each stroke, with each miscount adding an extra two strikes.
> 
> Steve has been leading teams for around twenty years before he leads the Avengers.

To his first team, he is green. They are much more experienced and they are much more competent and the fact that their new leader is both an SES and younger than they are is an insult. They take his orders grudgingly or not at all, and he knows they talk about him behind his back. Their first screw-up, one of the most stubborn members of his team defies orders and takes a shot that gives away their position. Steve get assigned twenty lashes with a single-tailed whip, and he's cocky, not expecting it to be the agony it is.

* * *

He's still unsure of himself with his second team. They follow his commands to the letter, doing nothing more than what he asks, and on their seventh mission together it gets to be so much that phrasing his orders properly becomes impossible. They do not take the initiative to go beyond what he says aloud, and he takes fifty strokes with a bullwhip when they miss a chance to take out the commander of the enemy squad. They do not do more than what he asks of them, and he does not ask them to take him off the post.

* * *

His third team is hardened by battle, and they express their pain by making others suffer. When he catches Lt. Bronson kicking Lt. Stiefel over and over, he assigns Bronson to three weeks of latrine duty, knowing that it's a light punishment, that he's being kind. He walks Stiefel to medical himself.

On their next mission, Bronson's tracer shot goes absurdly wide, hitting a gas tank and putting both the team and civilians at risk. Steve is assigned one hundred lashes with a scourge, and Bronson counts. He miscounts five times, and when Steve is done not even Stiefel helps.

* * *

His next team isn't that bad. They do their jobs but remain distant, a side effect of their last commander apparently being fond of punishing them in the same way he was punished, even though it is officially against protocol and there's no evidence either way. Steve is afraid that one of them will snap at him, just as they are afraid he will snap at them, and he requests reassignment because they will never be cohesive, not if they keep shying away from calling each other out on bad decisions. It's his longest tenure with a team so far.

* * *

His fifth team is cold, and not only because their official headquarters is in Nova Scotia. He replaces a well-loved commander recently killed in action, and the space that woman occupied seems to surround him. It is a space larger than he can ever hope to fill. He is not her, and they will make it clear in the way that the mess goes silent when he walks in. He is punished for allowing an asset to escape, and the entire time his team stands rigidly in silence but for Sgt. Lowell's light tones counting to one hundred and fifty.

* * *

He reaches something like respect, if not camaraderie, with his sixth unit. They do their jobs without a shadow of hesitation, listen to him when he speaks and offer up their own opinions when appropriate. They function as they should, and it's almost like being able to breathe after being underwater for so long. But Steve is human, and even he cannot prevent the bombing of his headquarters. All but two die. It was a mole in the squad who didn't care if she lived, he finds out later. He gets a miraculous reassignment when he should have gotten terminated.

* * *

His seventh team is out for blood. They've read his file, they know the mistakes he's made, and they don't want him on their team. They do the exact opposite of what Steve wants, every time, and their voices do not tremble when they count his strokes. After he gets assigned two hundred strokes with a knotted-end scourge and does not crack, they up their game. He's pretty sure it's Stewart who's the ringleader, and it's confirmed when it's his turn to count.

"One."

Strike.

"One."

The Admin notes the error, strikes again.

"Two."

Strike.

" _Two_."

Steve is forcibly reassigned.

* * *

The eighth unit makes it clear that everyone pulls their own weight and looks out only for themselves. Quite frankly, Steve wonders how people like this all ended up in one group, with all of them being the antithesis of how a team should be. He gets some credit for being willing to do things for himself, to take care of himself and even extend a hand to people who need it, but when the op they're running goes to shit so thoroughly that Steve's assigned the scourge again, he is left on the floor in a pool of blood.

* * *

His ninth unit is remarkably kind. He is actually allowed to join them in the mess (though they talk around him), and when four civilians die because of the poor judgement of one of their snipers and Steve gets two hundred lashes, they recognize that he can't get out of the restraints himself and cut him down. They get him to a bed, put a bucket next to him to be sick in, and leave him alone. Steve is out for four days as his body stitches itself together, and he hates himself for being so weak he can't stand.

* * *

He is used to apathy. He should be used to hell. This team is the worst, flubbing missions just to see him suffer, leaving him curled in a ball surrounded by his own blood and vomit and, if he's lost the strength to prevent even that, piss. Steve wishes there was a reason for it - there was a reason for all the others - but eventually he concludes that the team is inscrutable, and that the pysch evals stamped "possible psychopathy" don't go deep enough.

He requests a reassignment and not termination, because he hasn't hit his breaking point.

Not yet.


End file.
